Geopolitical Hermeneutics of Suspicion: An Epistemically Disciplined Method for Interpretive Evaluation

How can a critical interpretation of geopolitical narratives remain hermeneutically open while becoming explicit enough to be evaluated, contested, compared, and revised? This article develops Geopolitical Hermeneutics of Suspicion (HGS) as a second-order interpretive methodology for that problem. HGS translates philosophical and critical commitments into explicit epistemic obligations, operational criteria, evidence rules, contradiction tests, temporal safeguards, uncertainty registers, and revision procedures. The method comprises a five-phase analytical workflow—deconstruction of foundational dualisms; mapping of discursive production; symptomatic reading; analysis of material and institutional correlates; and multipolar contrast with reflexive review—and places an epistemic control architecture around it. A qualitative Hermeneutic Robustness Matrix records evidentiary convergence across material, discursive, and historical-comparative dimensions while keeping the dimensions analytically distinct. Two contrastive demonstrations, Libya 2011 and Ukraine 2022, show how the protocol constrains inferential moves from correlation to causation, from omission to constitutive silence, and from repetition to independent corroboration. A third demonstration, applying the identical protocol to the contested Anomalous Health Incidents narrative, functions as a disconfirming test case in which the same evidentiary rules yield a Weak classification, showing that the method can register non-confirmation rather than only confirm suspicion. The article argues that the methodological value of HGS lies in making the conditions of interpretation visible, its evidentiary burdens explicit, its vulnerabilities to error diagnosable, and its conclusions revisable.